The supreme purpose of life and eternity is to glorify and enjoy God! In this message, Dr. Joel Beeke will address this theme to children, explaining that God made us for the purpose of treasuring Him as our Savior and Lord. From there he will show what it looks like for the young to glorify and enjoy God: to be driven by grace, delighted by God, and devoted to God and His Word and people. Pursuant to this, they must desire godliness, display God’s likeness, defy sinful desires, and be determined to rejoice. 

Turn with me please to Jeremiah chapter 9, Jeremiah chapter 9. And boys and girls, I am going to talk to you tonight. So listen carefully. And afterward, I hope your dad talks to you and your mom about the talks tonight. And I hope you can remember at least three things that I'm going to say and you can tell them back.

But most of all, I hope the Lord will use it for your soul, your never-dying soul, because you're a sinner just like all of us and you need to be born again. You need to be made right with the Lord Jesus Christ. Jeremiah 9, 23 and 24. Thus saith the Lord, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches, but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercise loving kindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth for in these things I delight, saith the Lord. Let's pray.

Oh Lord God, come now and bless this address, especially to the children, and by extension to the teenagers. And help us, Lord. Help us to bring this truth of glorifying and enjoying thee to the level of a child. And Holy Spirit, take it from the ear to the heart, and do wondrous things. May this be the hour of conversion, genuine conversion for many children.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So boys and girls, I have a question for you. What do you want in life? If you could have anything you wanted, what would you want?

What would make you the most happy? Would it be to have a certain toy? Would it be to have perhaps a remote controlled drone? Would it be to take a special family vacation to the Rocky Mountains across country? I want to tell you something tonight.

No matter what you think you want, No matter what things you want, those things will never fill your inner soul. Your soul can only be filled If you're going to be happy in life with God Himself, nothing else will do it. Money won't do it. Friendships won't do it. Being popular won't do it.

Getting good grades won't do it. Only God, only God children, can fill that empty place inside of you. And I know that, I know that from my own experience. I was 14 years old and I was going to a public school and there was a man who wrote on the chalkboard, a teacher. I think it was actually against the law, but he wrote on the board, there is no God.

There is no God. And he signed his name beneath it. And he said, you give me three minutes and I'll prove to you there's no God and you, students, you can have the rest of the hour to try to refute my argument. And then he said something about how could God be God and have six million Jews exterminated by Hitler? It's impossible that there is a God.

I was very shy, I was very shy at the time. I never, never raised my hand in class. I never stood up and said anything. I hated standing in front of any group of people. But I was furious and I stood up.

I got out of my chair and I stood up and I said, I don't know if the theology was very good, but I said, that's because the Jews said, let his blood be upon us and our children. And he was so surprised to hear me talk, because he knew how shy I was, that he said, well, I'll talk to you at the end of the class. And I did, and I argued with him for the existence of God. But here's what happened, boys and girls. When I left school that day, as I was walking home, God came to me.

God came to me and began to work in my life. And he said, you, You are defending my name at school, but you don't even know me yourself. You go to church every Sunday. You have a God-fearing father and a God-fearing mother, but what is your relationship with me? That's how I felt.

And suddenly I knew that all the things I had, all the things I had, and I had everything that a young person could want. They were all empty to me. They were all garbage to me. Suddenly I realized I was missing what life is all about. And dear children, if you don't have God in your soul as your savior, as your treasure, as your Lord, you are missing what life is all about.

If you get a toy, you'll like it. If you get a new bike, you'll like it. It'll give you some pleasure for a week, two weeks, maybe six months. But you need something that will satisfy you for all eternity, until you are old and until you die forever and ever at the right hand of the throne of God. You need God.

You need God. The greatest treasure you can ever receive is God himself. A Puritan wrote this, When God gives you riches and honor and friends and close relatives, He can give you greater things. When He gives you the Lord's house, the Lord's day, the Lord's sacraments, the Lord's seasons of grace, He can give you greater things. When He gives you pardon of sin and peace of conscience, He gives you great things, but yet He can give you greater, for when he gives you himself in Jesus Christ, he gives you the greatest gift.

And dear children, dear teenagers, that is what you need. What we all need. Also your parents and your grandparents. Thus saith the Lord, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches, but he that glorieth, Let him glory in this that he understands and knows me that I am the Lord." And when that happens in your heart by the Holy Spirit, the Lord becomes the most real thing in your entire life, more real than the chairs you're sitting on right now. Then you have to do with God.

And that means that when you have to do with God, you will first become a sinner. You will be made aware of your sins. When I had to miss God and knew that I missed Him, I actually went to all my friends and I said, I'm sorry, I cannot be your friend anymore until I find God. And I went home every night after school and read the Bible and read the old Puritans and just, I searched for God. I couldn't live without God.

That's what you need most of all. God himself. Now the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it this way, this is the main purpose for why you're here on earth, to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever, as we heard in the last talk from Scott Brown. So what I want to do with you in this talk is I want to look at three things with you. What does it mean to glorify God?

What does it mean to enjoy God? And then what does it mean, what does it look like, what does it look like to glorify and enjoy God practically in your daily life. So what does it mean to glorify God? What does it mean to enjoy God? And what does it look like to do these things?

Well, First let me tell you what it doesn't mean to glorify God. It doesn't mean that you can add to God's glory. Glory is a word that means something that is weighty, something that is valuable. You can't add to the value of God. God is perfectly glorious.

There is nothing above God. God is not needy. God doesn't miss anything. You need a God who has everything. You need a Father, a Son, and a Holy Spirit.

You need the Trinity to be the God of your salvation. You need to be able to say with Samuel Rutherford, I don't know which divine person I love the most, but this I know, I need each of them, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and I love them all. You need to be able to say, God is my greatest desire, God is my greatest delight, God is my greatest joy, I want to glorify him with everything that I am. Take my eyes, Lord, take my hands, take my feet, take my soul, take my mind, take my will, take my whole being, body and soul, and let them all be consecrated to thee. You see, when God becomes real, like that sun we heard about in the last talk, and he shines into our hearts, then We want to indeed give those sunshine rays back to God.

We want to surrender our lives to God. To glorify God is to want to do what God wants me to do and to esteem Him as the most valuable treasure I could ever have to save my soul and to give me true joy in life. Proverbs 16 says, the Lord has made all things, that's you. That's you boys and girls, that's you teenager, that's you mom, dad, grandpa, grandma, He has made all things for Himself. For Himself.

Where to glorify Him. That's why we're here on earth. Isaiah 43, bring my sons from far, my daughters from the ends of the earth Even everyone that is called by my name for I have created them for my glory Romans 11 36 says that God deserves this recognition from us for of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever. Now this is why the scriptures tell us again and again that we must make known the glory and the goodness of God. We are to publicly honor God, we are to privately honor God, whether we eat or drink or whatsoever we do, do all for the glory of God, " Paul says.

So glorifying God is the preeminent goal, the main goal of the life of a Christian. I want to make God look good. I want to show that God is big. I want to fear God. To fear God means to fear His smiles, to love His smiles more than the smiles of men and to fear his frowns more than the frowns of men.

I know I need to stand before God on the judgment day, you see. My most important relationship in life is God. Am I right with God? Am I ready to die? For all men shall die and enter into judgment.

Am I ready to meet the Lord today? Boys and girls, if you're five years old, are you ready to meet the Lord today if you were to die? Do you have a new heart? Are you glorying in God? Is God your greatest joy?

Let him that glories, let him that boasts, boast in this, that He understands and knows me. This is what we are to boast in. God Himself, He is our boast, our glory and our power. So to glorify God is to want to live like Caleb, who followed the Lord fully in every area of his life. Even when he was surrounded for 40 years in the wilderness by murmuring Israelites.

Do you know, boys and girls, that 600, 000 people died in the wilderness in 40 years? If you do the math, that's about 40 a day. He saw 40 funerals a day, people were grumbling about God, they were murmuring against Moses and Aaron, but Caleb, the Bible says, when he came out of the wilderness At the age of 85, he still followed the Lord fully for God's glory. That's the only way to live. God made you for his glory, and when you don't glorify him, You are missing the total purpose of your life.

Secondly, we're made not only to glorify God, but also to enjoy Him, to enjoy Him forever. Glorifying God starts with the attitude of your heart. If deep in your soul you're not thrilled with God's gracious salvation, or if you're irritated by God's commands, or you're unmoved by God's beauty, you won't be really enjoying God in any meaningful way, even if you try to glorify Him. Of course not. Jonathan Edwards said this, that religion which God requires and will accept does not consist in weak and dull and lifeless wishes raising us but a little above a state of indifference to God, but God in his words, greatly insists upon this that we be in earnest, that we be in earnest, fervent in spirit and our hearts be vigorously engaged toward Him and truly worshiping Him.

That is true religion. So before we can tell others and glorify God to others about how good God is and how great He is, how holy He is, how kind He is, before we can tell others or the world that the Almighty God is our greatest treasure, our dearest friend, our most glorious king, we must know something of what it means to enjoy God, to enjoy God in the totality of who we are. Now there's a difference between enjoying God and being entertained by God. Some people are just, well, they just want to be entertained by God. They want the minister to crack jokes on Sunday when he stands up to bring them the word of God or they want to play games with God.

They're not serious about God. Many people, well most people, don't even care to have God. They don't even realize what they're missing. I hope that's not you. You see, when you know what it means to enjoy God, you know that this is the deepest joy of your life.

You know that it makes you bow down before God and with childlike fear and holy joy to worship Him and to exalt Him and He fills your heart and overflows who you are. You know that you truly enjoy God when you have a burning passion that everyone else around you may enjoy God as well, that they may have what you have because then you know that this is what life is all about. Rejoice in the Lord always, Philippians 4 says. And again I say rejoice. When you enjoy God, when you enjoy glorifying God, you can say with Asaph in Psalm 73, Lord, whom do I have in heaven but thee?

And there is none upon the earth that I desire beside thee. My heart and my flesh fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Now thirdly, what does it look like then to glorify and to enjoy God? I want to give you several points here in the rest of my time with you. First of all, It means to be driven by grace, driven by grace.

You see boys and girls, we won't enjoy God until we first learn that we have no right to God, that we deserve hell, and that all of God's mercies to us are just that, mercies and grace given to us through Jesus Christ. Who is a truly thankful person who really enjoys a gift that they receive? It's the person who says, I don't deserve it. If you think you deserve it, you're not truly happy with it, are you? Well, you say, I deserve this.

That's the way the world is today. And many people in the church too, they think they've got something better coming. They deserve this. And they're not happy. It always strikes me odd, and yet it's perfectly understandable, that in America today surveys have showed that Americans are more unhappy than many other people groups around the world who have no possessions hardly at all.

And one reason why is because we all feel so good about ourselves and we think we deserve so much, you can never get enough according to what you deserve. But you see, when you come before God who you are, a poor, needy, hell-worthy sinner and you find salvation in Jesus Christ and He's washed away your sins and He's given you eternal life and He's given you a joy that is unspeakable in knowing God, then you are overwhelmed with this joy and you understand all this joy is just a gift of God given to you at the expense of Jesus Christ. Boys and girls, I want to tell you a little story. When I was in my second church, I went to see a widow in a nursing home for the first time in my ministry there. And I was standing on this side of her bed, and she had a little index card on the wall on the other side of the bed, and I was kind of leaning over the bed trying to read it.

It's the only thing she had on the wall. She said, Pastor, you can go around the bed and you can read it, because on an index card is my whole life. My whole life I thought, on an index card? What could that be? So I was curious.

So I went around and Here's what the index card said. It said G-R-A-C-E, grace. But then there was a word beside each letter. Gods, riches, at Christ's expense. And she said, see, pastor, that's my life, that Christ has taken the place of me when I deserve to go to hell, and he has opened the gates of heaven for me so I can live to the end of my life and to all eternity rejoicing in his gracious salvation given to me at the expense of Jesus Christ who suffered and died for me.

So that's what glorifying and enjoying God looks like. That's what it smells like. It makes a sinner be driven by grace. Secondly, it makes us be delighted by God, to be delighted by God. God's grace is the fuel that powers the Christian life.

But as we personally enjoy the grace of God, you see, then we learn to delight in that grace, we learn to delight in God himself as he is in himself. We delight to obey him, we delight to do his will, we delight to serve him, we delight to surrender to him, we delight to worship him, we get more joy out of God than anything else in this world." A minister by the name of Charles Spurgeon said this, God's people get the best of both worlds. They get the best of the world to come where they'll be sin free, in spiritual union with Jesus, in a perfect utopian spiritual marriage with Jesus forever. But they also get the best of this world because they know a joy and delighting in God that goes far beyond all the joys of this world. So how do you know if you're delighting in God?

Well there was a peer to my name, William Perkins, he said this, he said, you may know if you're delighting in God because you have a hunger and a thirst inside of you to get to know God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit better and better. If you don't desire to know God better, you're not delighting in God. It's like a real love relationship. If you love your spouse, You always want to get to know them better, don't you? But this is a thousand times more true with God.

If you love God, if you delight in God, you want to know more and more about who He is and about what he has done, what he has promised, what he has performed, how he works in your soul. This is a glorious thing. To remember God, to delight in God and not forget all his benefits. To find your joy in the living God by delighting in Him and to find a happiness that is greater in the wisdom and the might and the riches of God than anyone around you knows who doesn't know God. The greatest joy we can have in life is to commune with God and behold his glory and see that glory as above our own salvation and learn to ravish God just for who He is in all His beauty and glory.

Jonathan Edwards put it this way, he said, my greatest joys in life have been when I've even risen above my own salvation and just ended in the beauty and the glory of God. Like David says in Psalm 27, one thing have I desired of the Lord, that I will seek after, that I may behold the beauty of the Lord and inquire in his temple. Oh, when we have this, you see, we have true happiness, true delight. That's what it smells like. That's what it looks like.

Delighting in God himself. So enjoying him. Third, devoted to God, devoted to God and thereby devoted to his word and devoted to his people and devoted to his church and devoted to obey his laws, there's a devotion, there's a consecration that flows out of this enjoyment. Our heart clings to God that we pledge allegiance to the living triune God. We covenant ourselves back to Him who covenants Himself to us and we just want to live to His glory in all that we do.

We want to see the glory of Christ. Then we're not trying to save as much money as possible, But we're trying to have as much communion with God as possible. Then we learn to love His word. We learn to love praying to Him, even though prayer is sometimes hard work. You know, when I was nine years old, Boys and girls, my dad sat me down on his bed and he took out some money and he put it beside me.

And he said, you see all this money? He said, I wanna talk to you about something that's worth more than all the money in the world. If you could pile all the money in the world in one big pile, and that is, do you know? I said no, dad, because I always got the wrong answer when my dad did those things, so I just always said no. And he said, an open throne of grace is worth more than all the money in the world.

To have real communion with God through prayer. And that throne is always open, my dad said. 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year. You can go to God right now, boys and girls, and He hears your cry. That's worth more than all the money in the world.

Oh, what a beautiful thing it is when God makes us a praying, worshiping, loyal people that long to serve Him all the days of our life. Then you see, then you see, We are devoted to him. He's our priority. He's number one in our lives. That's the way it ought to be.

Number four, desiring God-likeness. You see, when we enjoy God, we want to become more like Him, not in His incommunicable attributes, that's a big fancy word that means things that we will never have that He has, like He's unchangeable, will never be unchangeable, But in His communicable attributes, that is those attributes of God that are able to be communicated. We want to be more like Him. We want to imitate the Father in His love, in His grace. We want to be more holy like the Father.

And we want to have one mind with Jesus. We want to humble ourselves as Jesus did, to see ourselves of no reputation. And we want to be submissive to the mind of the Holy Spirit as he records his mind in the Bible. We want to live the Bible. We want not just to master and memorize certain texts of the Bible, but we want those texts to master us and to mold our lives.

And so you see, when you really glorify God and when you enjoy God, you want to be like the Father and more like the Son and more like the Holy Spirit. Now that doesn't mean that a Christian is always overwhelmed with this constant desire to be godly. No, sometimes we're still way too sinful. But we do know what it means to wrestle with God, that we might be more like Him. We do know what it means to cry out with Paul in Romans 7.

Oh, the good that I would do, sometimes I don't do, and the evil that I don't do, sometimes I do. Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death. I hate sin. I want to live to the glory of God. Thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

He's the only one that can do it for me and in me and with me and to me. But I want to be more like God. Now number five, display Christ's likeness. I don't only want to be like God, but I want to testify, I want my whole life to testify Christ-likeness. I want people to be able to see Christ in me.

I enjoy God so much. I want it to radiate from me. I want to be like Paul, who the People said, you can smell Christ upon him. He oozes with the anointment of Christ. That's what I want to be like.

I want to love him with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, all my strength. What does it mean to be Christ-like? Well, I suppose it means a thousand things, but let me give you three major things real quickly. Number one, it means to have a servant heart like Christ. You want to serve God, you want to serve his people, You want to serve the church.

You want your whole life to be a life of service. You don't want to live selfishly. When you, you can't enjoy God when you're living for yourself. I have a brother who was 19 years old, boys and girls, when I was 16, and he walked into my bedroom one day, you know what he said to me? He said, I've discovered what life is all about in one word.

I said, what's that? He said, service. I said, what? Explain. Well, he said, when God made us in paradise, he made us a servant.

We were to serve God, Adam was to serve Eve and Eve to serve Adam, they were to serve creation, address the garden and keep it. But when we fell, We lost that image of God in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. We lost that concept of service and we started to live for ourselves. But when we get born again, when we get a new heart, the Holy Spirit works in us. You see, Then we get the whole concept of service back.

Then we want to serve our parents. We want to serve God. We want to serve the church. We want to be like Christ. We want to have a servant heart.

And at the time, I remember saying back to him, yeah, that sounds pretty good to me. Now some 50 plus years later, that sounds very good to me. Life that enjoys God produces servant hearts. But secondly, when you become more Christ-like out of enjoying God, you can also smell on such a person a loving heart. Jesus, Jesus loved people, even in a natural way.

He cleansed lepers. He held babies in his arms when it wasn't kosher for a leader to do that. He was loving. The more you're like Jesus, the more you will love people, the more you will love their soul, the more you will see every unconverted person as a mission field and you want them to know the love that you know in the love of Christ. And then thirdly, if you enjoy God, you will grow even though it's hard to see it.

You will grow in humility. You'll grow not just in a servant heart, in a loving heart, but also in a humble heart. Christ was humble. He was meek. He was lowly.

You'll become more like Him. He will increase and you will decrease. And you will understand what the Church Father, Augustine, said when someone asked him, what are three things that the church needs more than anything else. What three graces? And he said humility, humility, humility.

No, I'm not saying that when you enjoy God, you'll have a perfect servant heart, a perfect loving heart, a perfect humble heart, no. But there will be a growing of these things in you as Jesus forms you to be more conformed to his image. And number six, define sinful desires, define sinful desires. The Puritan John Olin said, boys and girls, Be killing sin every day or sin Will be killing you You see when we allow sin to come into the door of our heart and we let it indwell our heart, it will destroy so much in us, so much of that enjoyment of God and of his glory. To hate sin and to love Jesus and enjoy God belong together.

And so we must pray every day, children, that we will hate sin more and love Jesus more. And the way to hate sin and fight against sin is to be reading in the Bible, is to be spending time in prayer, it's to be avoiding worldly things, not watching junk stuff on television or the modern media, but thinking on good things, as Paul says in Philippians chapter four. And when you do fall into sin, that you don't wallow in that sin, but you take it straight to Jesus and you confess your guilt. You don't defend your sin. You don't say it's a big deal.

Every sin is a big deal in God's eyes. In fact, one of the old Puritans said this, "'The smallest sin is greater than the biggest affliction.'" The smallest Sin is bigger than your greatest sad time, boys and girls. You need to hate sin with all your heart. Ask God to teach you that, that you would hate sin and love Christ and pursue holiness and seek to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. That leads me to number seven, the last one.

Determination to rejoice. You see, too often, even God's people can get down, get discouraged, and they forget that God will work all things together for good to them who love him. And when you look at who you are when you are a believer, Romans 6-11, Reckon yourself dead unto sin and alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. You have no reason if you're a true believer not to rejoice. God has saved you.

Jesus is at the right hand to represent you and pray for you. He's going to bring you home to himself. No matter what happens to you, you should rejoice. Be determined to rejoice in God, in his salvation. So This is your goal, boys and girls, this is your goal, teenagers, in life, to follow God fully all your life, remembering that this lifestyle is not a burden, it's a gift, There's no one so happy as a true child of God.

I wanna tell you something, boys and girls. I've been, had the privilege, I should say, I've had the privilege of preaching in dozens of different countries around the world. I've met hundreds of thousands of genuine children of God in my lifetime. I have never met one, never met one who said, Oh, it's not worth it to be a Christian. It's not worth it to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

And I've met many people, however, unsaved people or children of God who didn't worship God until they were a lot older. And they would say things like this, oh, I'm not ready to die. Or if they were older and they were saved, they'd say, oh, I'm so sad that I wasted so many years of my life not glorifying God, not enjoying him forever. I had a woman come to me and say, that music that I listened to as a teenager, I'm now in my 50s and that music, that junk music with those bad lyrics, it keeps going through my mind and going through my mind. I can't get rid of it.

Oh, boys and girls, don't fill your minds with this world. Fill your minds with God and His word. Ask God to work in your heart so that you will glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. That all your actions may be driven by grace as you delight in this glorious triune God and devote yourself to Him. And as you desire and display His likeness, as you defy sin and be determined to rejoice in Him forever so that you too can say, but of Him and through Him and to Him are all things to whom be glory forever.

Amen. Let's pray. Great God of heaven, we ask thy benediction and this message and we do pray that also the children, the teenagers among us would glorify thee and enjoy thee forever. But also help each one of us, Lord, also unsaved adults among us to abandon this world's shallow, selfish, unhappy lifestyle and seek to know thee whom to know in Christ is life eternal. Oh God, come and save, please Lord.

Be a wonder working God, do exceeding abundantly above all that we could ask or think, and that they would be families that would go to their homes after this conference rejoicing that their children have been wrought upon by the saving work of the Holy Spirit so that they may enjoy thee and glorify thee forever. In Jesus' name, amen.